I had the opportunity last year of shooting a dance competition team in an interesting location.
There was this one sequence of 2 young ballerinas posing in windows that was particularly alluring. Except, well, this particular spot was not entirely appealing.
Love that blue wall? How about the paneling? Yea, me neither. There were also compositional challenges – because of how I had to shoot there is distortion from the lens to deal with, in addition to having to deal with the logistics of the area.
I could fix the distortion somewhat in post processing, and the color by B&W. I took several variants of this, including a silhouette which worked:
But I really liked that gesture in that first image – the ballerina on the left peeking around to the one on the right. But I had to deal with that environment.
So I put it on the back burner to simmer for a while. About a year.
I finally decided to eliminate the location entirely and use a simple, graphic, environment. Just lines. A hint of shadow. It reminds me somewhat of seventies posters:
The idea of the photograph still emerges even though the physical attributes of its location have changed drastically. I think this works as a much simpler composition. And no blue wall.